August 30, 2013

Before reading this, I felt that while Snowden’s intentions were probably good, government surveillance was necessary in this frightening world and should not be curtailed. I believed that Snowden should come home and defend what he did in court. But if the government can treat a citizen as Poitras has been treated without any due process or possibility of protest or appeal — then yes, Snowden was entirely right to do what he did. More power to him. And he’d be wise not to leave Russia. JUDITH M. AMORY, New York, posted on nytimes.com

This was a masterpiece of situational irony. So much of the reporting concerns Poitras’s reluctance to be in the public eye, remaining behind the scenes of a story that has made icons of Snowden and Greenwald. But this same profile broadcasts an intimate look at her, splashing her face across the cover of a pre-eminent magazine. So Maass, in publicizing Poitras’s fear of once again becoming a target of intrusive government surveillance, lends her enough renown (or notoriety, depending on your perspective) to amplify and substantiate those exact fears. Maybe it’s a clever ploy: like Glenn Greenwald’s April 2012 Salon story on Poitras, this public exposure will keep the government off her back by raising the cost (in moral reputation) of snooping on her without charges. And I sure hope it works, so that she can continue to resist government abuse and stand up for privacy. CHARLES KOPEL, New York

Laura Poitras says, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to live someplace and feel like I have my privacy.” This, from a woman in the business of documentary films, which rely on intrusion — a somewhat disingenuous point. Snowden, meanwhile, has accepted the hospitality of Russia, where Poitras’s life would be fairly cheap and Glenn Greenwald’s very lifestyle would mark him as expendable. Yes, the N.S.A.’s and Mossads of the world are trying to sell us the illusion of safety by intruding into our lives. Still, I prefer that to Snowden and Putin. It’s quite difficult to separate the “good guys” from the publicity seekers. LELDE B. GILMAN, Portland Ore.

I believe what “Snowden’s people” did would have been right and noble in some ideal world. But in the practical world we live in, it is misguided and potentially harmful. Has Snowden uncovered any real harm to real people? I’m not aware of any. And yet it is safe to assume that what Snowden has done has probably aided, however unwittingly, our enemies. In the real world, the best intentions often pave roads to the wrong destination. VALENTIN LYUBARSKY, Brooklyn, posted on nytimes.com

The parallels between the plight of the elephants in Kerala and that of the captive orcas in the U.S., which have also killed humans, show that the imprisonment and mistreatment of animals for show — whether for religion or for “wildlife education” — has the same root cause the world over: profit. KAREN FISHLER, Seattle, posted on nytimes.com

Berg seems to be interested in the complicated moral issues generated by war. “Battleship” was a failure because it did not raise any nuanced moral questions, requiring its audience to leave their brains “outside the theater.” The plot, involving an alien invasion presumably to plunder Earth’s resources, was presented without the slightest irony, considering America’s voracious appetite for raw materials. Why do most blockbuster films keep their audiences in a state of robotic mindlessness? Had there been more courage here — the same courage required of the soldiers Berg vaunts so much — the film could have addressed the complexities of war that he seems so interested in depicting. RONALD TUCH, Brooklyn, posted on nytimes.com

I had no idea that water beds were invented in the Haight in 1968 (but it seems obvious in retrospect). @SFNick, via Twitter

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